Singer/songwriter Aly Spaltro often finds inspiration whenever she walks through her home city of New York City and neighborhood in Queens. One such walk inspired “Deep Love,” a song that immediately gave clarity and vindication to the songs she had written in prior weeks and months.
Spaltro was deep into the writing process for her latest album Even in the Tremor when she set out for a walk one day, feeling sad and lonely. She didn’t feel like connecting with anyone and everyone seemed as if “they were also off in their own heads.”
“It just felt gloomy, me walking around Manhattan, around all the big office buildings,” she says. “When I got off the train, I walked by my neighbors and they were out sharing a really beautiful moment, a really simple, beautiful moment. It was so inspiring to me. It made me feel better… I just started thinking about the people that I love and the things I’m grateful for.
“So, when I got home, I just picked up my guitar and started strumming a few chords and the song kind of fell out of me,” she continues. “It felt a little like it wrote itself. I’m really grateful that it came to me because it really felt to me like it was the closure I needed to know that I had expressed all that I had set out to in the writing of the record. Then I knew that it was ready.”
In the past two years, Spaltro has grown up considerably as a songwriter and an individual, and Even in the Tremor finds her writing more freely and honestly about herself and her feelings. As she enters the final months of her 20s, Spaltro is more realistic and direct with how she approaches her emotions. The kid gloves are off.
“I started writing songs when I was 18. I have obviously grown so much in the last 12 years that I think I have become more introspective, a little just more observant as opposed to maybe obsessive musically, lyrically,” she says. “So, I think there’s more of a maturity and evolution in the music. And a directness as well.”
This directness was inspired partly by authors such as Raymond Carver and Lucia Berlin. And, even more personally, by her girlfriend, who is a fiction writer.
“She has a really beautiful way of being very direct in her language, nothing flowery or trying to be lush and beautiful,” Spaltro says. “It ends up being beautiful just in its simplicity.”
She’s used this newfound directness to pull herself out of negative feelings and become more present when they came.
“If there’s a song that begins with anxiety, I try to resolve that in real time,” she says. “So, if the song began with chaos or stress, for the most part within this record, those feelings resolve toward more peace and clarity by the end of the song lyrically.”
That approach can be heard on the album’s title track. In the song, she repeats the line “the past kills the present if I let it.”
“I’ve learned more recently that it’s my own choice whether I decide I want to spin out into obsessing over the past, or anything I regret or mistakes I’ve made,” Spaltro says. She also has realized the importance of cherishing the small moments and details in life, even as seemingly insignificant as getting knots out of her girlfriend’s wet hair on “Deep Love.”
“I think it’s really easy to walk through life and not really notice all the love and the beauty and hope that’s happening in really small doses everywhere, whether it’s two strangers sharing a moment or two people who love each other, or a parent and their child or whatever,” she says. “These little moments of inspiration and creativity and love are all around.
“I think they’re everywhere, but I especially love them in New York City… There are so many moments in the city and on the subway where people actually acknowledge each other for a minute and stop with their bustle. I love seeing that. Just moments of humanity I find really inspiring no matter how small.”
Lady Lamb plays the Back Room at Colectivo on Saturday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. with Renata Zeiguer and Alex Schaaf.
